President Obama's summer slump

The coming weeks offer Obama a chance to shift the direction of his presidency. | AP Photo

“Over the course of the last eight months, the president and senior members of his team have done more to reach out to Congress and engage them,” said Deputy Press Secretary Josh Earnest. “That’s paid dividends already, including the strong bipartisan support for an immigration bill in the Senate.”

The hope, which White House officials acknowledge is far from a certainty, is that Senate action will create momentum for passage of comprehensive immigration legislation — that bill is currently stalled in the House. In addition, the federal government will shut down if a deal to extend operations isn’t reached before Oct. 1. Shortly after that, the nation will hit its statutory debt ceiling — which gives Congress the choice of raising the limit or sending the nation into default.

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In each case, the White House has taken a hard line because administration officials feel that they are winning the public argument. Obama has mocked the set of Republicans who have threatened to shut down the government to stop the implementation of his health care law — a strategy that GOP leaders have disavowed. He’s said he won’t negotiate over the debt ceiling.

White House aides also rejected suggestions that Obama has allowed himself to be bullied on Fed chair deliberations.

He recently came to the public defense of Summers, whom he said was being treated unfairly in the media. “I felt the same way when people were attacking Susan Rice before she was nominated for anything,” Obama said.

But in some ways that comparison made the point. Obama, despite what seemed his clear preferences, backed down from appointing Rice to be secretary of state. He gave the job to John Kerry and tapped Rice for national security adviser, which requires no Senate confirmation. In this case, it’s mostly Democrats, not Republicans, who are taking aim at Summers.

Cumulatively, Obama aides say, the coming fall confrontations will make complaints about the president’s second term doldrums this summer seem irrelevant.

“We don’t look at things in eight-month increments, that’s not the scorecard,” said a senior White House official. “But even if it was, we are doing fine.”

But these officials acknowledge the obvious: the Syria episode will dominate the early fall in ways that no one can predict. The president’s calculation is that — while congressional authorization of a military strike is not necessary — his position as commander in chief is stronger with it, especially since the Syria confrontation may be prelude to a much more consequential showdown with Iran later in his term.

Some congressional Democrats regard this strategy as wishful thinking. It is just as likely, they say, that Obama will lose his request for authorization, or win it with more strings attached than he wants. In any event, if he takes military action and things don’t go well, he will own the results no matter what happens in Congress.

“This Syria situation, this could be the biggest miscalculation of his presidency,” the senior House Democrat said Sunday, noting that Obama hadn’t gotten the typical bounce from his re-election. “Not only is his credibility on the line, but the country’s credibility is on the line. So, he is rolling the dice by taking this to Congress.”

Another senior Democrat said Obama will lose big or win big on Syria.

“If he loses the vote, then clearly he’s weakened,” that lawmaker said. “If he wins the vote, he is significantly strengthened.”

Rep. Zoe Lofgren (D-Calif.) said it’s too important a call to get into the politics of the equation — and, for the record, she likes his deliberative style.

“I haven’t gone into a grading system. I think there’s a serious question facing the United States and to do kind of a winner-loser approach politically would really be inadvisable,” she said. “I think there’s some truth to the proposition that the president tries to figure out what he’s doing before he does it, and that’s a breath of fresh air.”

Richard Haass, the head of the Council on Foreign Relations, was less impressed. He said on Twitter that Obama’s move asking Congress for authority to act “sets a bad precedent and raises doubtabout U.S. will/ability to act.”

Long-time presidential observer David Gergen, who has worked for both Republican and Democratic presidents, said Obama risks turning an asset — the openness of his mind — into a vulnerability.

“It is often true with leaders that their strengths become their weaknesses,” said Gergen, a former adviser to presidents who now teaches at Harvard’s Kennedy School.

“Americans generally welcomed Obama’s more deliberative nature,” at the start of his presidency, Gergen said. “Now it’s starting to come across as vacillation and indecision and hesitation. And I think that’s undermined some of his authority.”

Obama isn’t likely to adjust his style anytime soon, said presidential historian Douglas Brinkley, who has been a regular visitor to the White House.

“He’s prudent, and sometimes people want to see a kind of more rough-and-tumble style,” Brinkley said. “I gave that up about five years ago, thinking that’s how he was going to be. This is a president that deliberates.”